Oberlander Prize Forum V: RE-SEARCH

RE: SEARCH: This full day symposium on October 29 explores how landscape architects are reclaiming and redefining their relationship between research and design. It is bracketed by a plenary keynote reception the evening prior (October 28) and mobile workshops the day following (October 30). 

The depth of research that informs the design work of Oberlander Prize laureate Mario Schjetnan and his firm Grupo de Diseño (GDU), is the impetus for the event. At Longwood Gardens, the recent transformation and reconstruction of Roberto Burle Marx’s Cascade Garden by landscape architects Reed Hilderbrand and architects Weiss and Manfredi is a prime example of a holistic research-driven design process that values both natural/ecological and historic/cultural systems. Surveying the work and measuring the success at Longwood, and elsewhere in North America—the focus of this symposium and related events—provides the ideal opportunity to explore how today’s practitioners are building and sharing knowledge with the joint quest of revealing, honoring, and integrating cultural systems and lifeways in the face of inevitable change.